Tag Archives: Life Coaching

Do you have a higher calling but keep avoiding it? I bet you can share many reasons why you haven’t stepped into your higher calling yet. For example…..

It’s illogical. It’s way above your skill level. It’s risky. You are comfortable right where you are at. It’s too big. You aren’t ready.

Let’s take a look at how Fresh Tracker Lisa stepped past her Edge and into her higher calling of running for House of Representatives.

Situation Overview
Lisa’s Fresh Tracks journey involved letting go of long-time, comfortable relationships, not resisting going where she was being led, and taking time to listen to honor her inner voice.

Lisa’s business had come to a slow yet definite stop. An empty nester, her three kids had launched and for the first time in her life she had time to focus exclusively on herself. Her daughter was newly married and her twin boys had graduated college and were on their own. Although her business was slow and her life was busy, at this major turning point in her life she felt change was afoot and took some time to focus on herself and how to get her 20 year public relations business back on track.

Consequences of Ignoring the Longing
In spite of the outer turmoil she was experiencing, Lisa began to focus her attention on something she always knew in her heart she would do – run for office. Yet the thought of doing it all just made her head spin and she sat on her desire by keeping busy and focusing on everyone else. Because she wasn’t growing, she began to shrink. The shrinking was reflected in her business results and her stress level.

Lisa had always longed to run for political office. An active member of both the community she lives in and the public relations community she works in, Lisa didn’t see how she could make the time or space to run for a political office. She needed to get her business back into profitability and make a living before stepping into such lofty ideals!

Lisa shares that the transition was hard. She resisted letting go of large parts of her life that she loved so much. Her turmoil in how to move forward running for office while getting her weakened business in the black resulted in her keeping one foot in her old world and sticking one toe in the new.

Working with the LawIn order to make time for a campaign Lisa realized she needed to let some things go. The first were her close ties to the public relations community. Scaling back on networking events and leadership seemed counter intuitive since she was striving to gain more clients not less. She had many long-time, supportive friends there that had been a point of joy for decades. Her first reaction was to work more because her business was slow, which is the opposite of scaling back on networking.

The Law of Sacrifice states that to have something of greater value in your life you must be willing to give up something of lesser value. In this instance it was community.

The other Law in play here is the Law of Non-Resistance, which states that whatever you resist, persists. Lisa was resisting pursuing her higher calling because of what she perceived to be more pressing needs.

Results
Lisa tells me that once she really let go things immediately started falling into place. First of all, in spite of cutting back on her PR community, her business picked back up – and she hired several contractors to do much of the work, giving her time to focus on campaigning.

While Lisa does spend much less time attending many of the networking and social events she attended for decades, yet she doesn’t feel like she’s completely lost the friends or the connections she was so fearful of losing. She shares that she has, in fact, gained new friends with similar passions as she runs for office. Letting go of her old community freed up the space to create a new community that is in alignment with her higher calling of being elected to the House of Representatives.

Overview

Belief – Scarcity of time. Resisting following intuition because of “logic”.

Practices leading to change – Let go of old relationships. Changed focus on use of time.

Expect to Fail on Your Road to SuccessAnd Quit Beating Yourself Up About It!

There’s a saying in skiing that if you don’t fall you’re not pushing yourself, which my dad annoyingly repeated to me over and over again as a kid on the ski slopes of Colorado. And not only did he expect me to fall, he made me get up by myself! He would walk up the mountain on his skis, stand right next to me and tell me what to do; how to untangle my legs, put my ski back on while standing sideways on the mountain, un-fog my wet goggles so I could see. I was miserable.

As a mother myself I can now see how patient he actually was, waiting for my wailing tears to stop and discouraging me from sliding down the mountain on my butt instead of skiing after the crash. He wanted me to be confident in myself so that I knew I was strong enough to get out of any situation.

Failing is a stepping stone to successThrough my tears and grumbling with each fall, my dad taught me an important lesson – falling is OK. It is, in fact, expected if you want to get better. What is also expected is that I pick myself back up, don’t rely on anyone else to bail me out, and get on my way down the mountain and not catch a ride with a snowmobile (which I only did once when I tried snowboarding).

If you’re not falling you’re not pushing yourself is an important lesson for all entrepreneurs and for anyone that is cutting Fresh Tracks. You will fall. You will fail. It is expected and in fact good because if you aren’t falling you aren’t growing. You aren’t pushing yourself and your goals are probably not stretching you enough. The last lesson, it’s up to you to pick yourself back up.

Because no one else gives a shit.

Failure is a part of your growth and is a necessary and unavoidable part of the Fresh Tracks process. As humans it’s natural to want to avoid the pain and fear involved in falling. We hide our failures from others in shame and it’s not usually talked about so we don’t see how others are falling along their way too. We see the success of others, but not the long, painful journey they endured to get there. We try at all costs to master things without experiencing the emotional roller coaster that goes along with true growth.

We can intellectualize failing and get that it’s going to happen, but when it actually happens it’s a lot harder than we can ever expect it to be and many good people end up quitting. When you are skiing and you fall you get wet. Snow gets in your gloves and down your back. It’s gets in your goggles and fogs them up. It takes time, patience, and occasionally a spare pair of gloves to swap out to continue on through the day.

How can you best endure the dips and falls of creating your Fresh Tracks? Start by developing a sense of trust in yourself – you know your next step. When you do this your intuition gets stronger and you are more able to bounce back quickly from the setbacks you are destined to experience. Worrying about failing is only going to make you feels worse, so don’t focus on it.

Trust yourself not that you won’t fail, but that you’ll keep trying. There is an old saying that ‘businesses don’t go under, the owners quit’. I share that saying with you and ask you to apply that to your goals. Trusting yourself that you won’t quit is key factor in success and is what differentiates those that do accomplish what they want in life from those that don’t.